This blog is a forum for Mentor High School Honors English 12 students to engage in book discussions based on free reading books.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is a collection of some of the first Sherlock Holmes stories. They were originally published as single short stories in the Strand Magazine, but have now been placed conveniently together in one novel.

The first story in the book, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” has Holmes and Watson trying to solve the King of Bohemia’s case. The king explains that he is engaged to a Scandinavian princess, but at one time of his life was with an Opera singer named Irene Adler, who is now blackmailing him and has evidence of their relationship that could potentially ruin his engagement. He asks Holmes to find and destroy whatever evidence Adler has, and Holmes agrees to attempt to help him with his case. He disguises himself in order to enter Adler’s house, where a party is being held, and with the help of Watson, attempts to find the evidence. Whether he is able to succeed or not, you will have to read to find out.

In another short story, titled “A Case of Identity,” Sherlock Holmes is asked by Mary Sutherland to help her find her fiancée, who disappeared the day they were to be wed. Throughout all the stories, one is able to see how Holmes has a gift for reading into people and piecing things together about them through observation. In this story, he is able to figure out exactly who Mary’s supposed fiancée is solely by knowing that he works in an office on Leadenhall Street. By matching the typewritten letter of the fiancée to one written by someone in her family, he learns that maybe the fiancée is really a family member in disguise.

1. In these stories, Holmes is a master at solving simple problems through observation. He says, “Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook” (32). Do you think that we sometimes overlook simple things in our daily lives? For example, if someone were to ask you what the person who sat across from you at lunch on Friday was wearing, would you be able to remember the details?

22 comments:

I do think people often over look the simple things in our lives. I believe that in today's society everyone else is so caught up in what we have to do and how busy we are that we forget to look at our surroundings and take in the details.

Most people overlook all of the little details in their lives. They only focus on how it affects them personally, and other than that they can tune out everything else happening around them. It is difficult to pay attention to anything today because of how much people have on their minds all the time. Most people cannot take the time to observe like Holmes.

I think people overlook the minor details of daily life because, frankly, it does not really matter for most people if they know these things or not because most people are not investigators. However, I do think the world would be a more interesting place if more people noticed the little things about people and their actions more often.

I believe it is true that society has been conditioned to overlook the smaller things in life. One may argue that your example, the specific example of clothing, is trivial and may not be a big deal. The person who was actually wearing the clothes could retort that their shirt was hand made by their great grandmother before she passed away, or for some other emotionally appealing reason. People choose to wear certain clothes because there is an underlying meaning behind the actual material good of the clothes. This can be related to almost anything we have here on our planet. Holmes hones his focus in on these small details to determine bigger meanings within his occupation.

Yes, I feel that people definitely overlook simple every day things in today's world. Everyone is so caught up in the stress of everyday life that they don't feel the need to acknowledge or appreciate the small things.

I feel that it is very easy to overlook very simple things in the fast paced world we live in today. I notice that I am yelled at on a daily basis for being completely oblivious to the things around me

1. I definitely think we over the simple things in life. Especially if we do something daily, at the same time we find it boring and neglect the details. We look over the little aspects and details. And i would not be able to tell what the person across from me at lunch was wearing on Friday. That is the perfect example. I;m spending ample time doing something, 47 minutes, and i cannot remember or recall a simple detail that was right in front of me.

I don't think I would be able to remember. The human mind is so complex and efficient that it tends to focus most memory and capacity on things we coherently aknowledge so we can benefit most from what we observe, little is wasted on things we don't consider important.

In my opinion, everyone is different. Some people don't notice small things while others overlook important things almost more than the little details. I'm one of those people who can be looking for something that's right in front of my face and never find it even if it fell off the shelf and hit me in the foot, but I remember everyone's birthday.

I think it's those simple things in life that we miss that cause us to take so many things for granted. For instance if I cut peoples hair it's nothing to me just something simple but to that person it's the world and we dont realize that the simple things in life should mean the world to us.

I think it's interesting to see that so many people unintentionally overlook things in life, some of which they see everyday. I think that life has gotten so fast paced that we just don't take the time everyday to look more into things. While Holmes may be using his keen sense of observation to help him get a better grasp on his cases with his occupation, I believe it would be interesting if we took the time to observe more in everyday life. Maybe we would learn new things about ourselves and others.

I agree that people in society often overlook the little things in life. I believe it is this way because we simply fall into a routine sometimes, in which we do not pay attention and just go with the flow. I know that this happens to me because sometimes as someone is recalling an event I may not remember certain details simply because I overlooked them or was not paying and particular attention.

There are so many little details constantly bombarding our senses that we can't remember them all. We usually only remember the details that we find importance in. But there are some people out there that can remember every detail of every single day of their lives. To me that seems crazy seeing as I can hardly remember what I ate for lunch yesterday.

1.i feel we always overlook things in life. in fact i think we overlook just more than the simple things but sometimes we are blind to much bigger problems. man doesn't appreciate the little things in life like nature and family because things get in the way of our judgement. because we are blind to a lot of things we are blind to bigger problems and because of this, have a hard time noticing other people problems. we never pay attention to anything really and eventually feel bad for never caring like we should have.